Feminism isn’t exactly well known for having nice things to say about the male half of the species. While I don’t doubt there are exceptions (Camille Paglia comes to mind) feminism would generally prefer to see these entities as a negative influence over a positive one. Case in point, the relentless claim of men’s interpretation of women as a source of oppression. According to feminism, men’s concepts of what a women is, what a women should be, and basically any attempt by men to analyze or build a women’s character will always be inferior to that of a woman’s at best, and wholly detrimental at worst. The advice to women by men make them worse, not better, as people, so they say. Men’s moral guidelines are not properly moral for women. Men, simply put, are anything but a good influence on women.

With generations of women refusing to accept men’s advice and/or demands on how to properly behave, is it any wonder that men are beginning to pick up on the concept themselves? Women ought not to be so shocked at the prospect of men going their own way; after all, these same women sought to do the same for their own gender—women going their own way, if you will. And now we have both genders going their own way, isolating themselves from the outside influence of the other gender in regards to their character and autonomy.

What could a man offer a woman aside from his anatomy that women, in their superior understanding of themselves, could not offer better, wonder our generation of women. Indeed, how could one even admit the existence of such a thing without being considered sexist? But of course, our culture is rife with examples of morally superior females offering superior definitions of the other sex, and showing their purpose as an external influence. Could we ever admit the same about men in relation to women, or must we continue to hold ourselves under feminist double standards?

The world at large generally is not in front of people’s faces. Truth be told, hardly anything is in front of people’s faces. Yet, they are more than eager to think otherwise. Detailed, first-hand experience of all those we claim to speak for, as well as knowledge of all their thoughts and feelings, is a complete impossibility. Yet this doesn’t stop conclusive action being taken regardless of the lack of conclusion.

Our world view is a blurred mass of scattered, loosely-recalled details that we think resembles something cohesive but doesn’t. Ink blots gathered in a makeshift shape that the brain tries to interpret as a definite object for which it can clearly recognize. We, in essence, have a Rorschach view of the world.

Anyone who’s taken a Rorschach test or observed scenes of Rorschach tests on television knows the deal. The psychiatrist holds up patterns of ink blots and asks what the patient sees. A conclusion regarding the patient’s psyche is then assumed based on the responses. One who sees flowers might be interpreted as sheltered and innocent, while one who sees a bloodied corpse might be interpreted as neglected and abused.

The function of ideologues is to interfere with this process, basically holding the Rorschach image up to the viewer and explaining in highly rhetorical detail what the Rorschach actually represents, how to see it the way they do, and why this way of looking at the Rorschach is the proper way to look at it. The ideologue convinces the viewer that this is not a vague Rorschach pattern that could represent any number of things, but is, in actuality, this very clear and distinct image that the ideologue insists that it is.

Imagine this Rorschach represented a view of society. A feminist would look at this and claim to see an oppressive patriarchy, whereas a non-feminist would be more likely to see it for what it objectively is: a Rorschach.

These ink blots can be seen as blots of societal issues, and depending on ideology a different pattern (and, thus, a different image) would be proclaimed Traditionalists would call the image the demoralization caused by breaking from tradition, while progressives would call it cognitive dissonance caused by the enforcing of tradition. Feminists would refer to the image as the results of patriarchy, while male chauvinists would refer to it the results of female authority.

Those who don’t buy in to ideology would simply call it what it is, a Rorschach, regardless of what their brain might have been trained to see.

As long as the complexities of the modern world are treated like the fully-formed mental images in the minds of the ideologically manipulated, rather than as the mass of ink blots we more realistically see them as, those looking to have an impact will treat society as something it may very well not be. And these many different ideologues will all treat it as something completely different, each treatment resulting in very clear consequences for blurry causes. It’s time we stood up to these ideologues—the preachers, politicians and pundits—and stopped taking their rigged Rorschach tests.

Unplugging from the matrix of left-wing dogma that thickly permeates the academy walls and television screens of today is no easy task. It’s easy to simply go with the flow of politics and stay comforted in the belief that your neighbors are guaranteed to consider you a moral human being that isn’t “setting human progress back”. And hiding within the confines of such ideological cages is made all the more easy under the guise of “freethought”, in other words, being free to think what you’re told you should. The freedom to escape from one confinement only to crawl into another. You can be christened the honor of being a “skeptic” without the realization that true skepticism is the questioning of everything, not just what a so-called “skeptic” tells you to question.

When you finally “unplug” and discover true freethought and skepticism, the world becomes a lot more frightening. Those who were once your allies turn on you, you have no guarantee of meeting others who are like-minded and tolerant, you begin seeing the damage in what you once thought was righteous, and you no longer have a path that you can trust and hold on to.

Except for the truth. And truth is no more than what the eye can see. Seldom does truth ever have a conclusion. Yet foregone conclusions are what we are brought up with; conclusions being masqueraded as truth. And few things in our lives are as indoctrinated with conclusions as gender.

Of course, we are told that these foregone conclusions are those of long-standing tradition, and that we are to question these traditions. Or at least, what we are told are the traditions. And in claiming skepticism of gender traditions, we are then asked to embrace what is considered to be the alternative: feminism. Which, in essence, is yet another foregone conclusion in and of itself.

What is feminism? Simply put, feminism is the desire for equality of the sexes under the belief that males are fundamentally advantaged over females, and that action must be taken to eliminate this. For those of us who have been indoctrinated with modern-day Western thought, such a goal may seem noble. It takes a fair bit of thinking outside the mainstream Liberal-Democratic box to realize the glaring fallacies of this goal.

Before we take feminist action, we must first be certain that feminist conclusions are truth. And in order for them to be truth, what is truth must lead to such conclusions and only such conclusions. Is this the case? Your average Liberal-Democratic education might have you think so, but one glance at the sheer diversity of conclusions, many of them greatly contradicting those that fall into the category of feminism, proves truth to be far more diverse than feminism can contain. And if feminism cannot contain wholly contain the truth, why rely on feminism to be the truth?

Feminism has no obligation to truth. Its only obligation is to feminism itself, which is the desire for equality of the sexes under the belief that males are fundamentally advantaged over females. If, by any chance, truth happens to contradict feminism, then one who follows feminism does not follow truth. One must make the decision to give priority either to feminism or to truth itself. The former would be a feminist, while the latter would not be.

The living conditions of women and men cannot be truthfully defined in an overall conclusion, because the sheer diversity and complexity in terms of individual exepriences and interpretations of these experiences cannot allow it. Such variation cannot allow for objective equality, for individuals will always possess different concepts of how different things can be considered equal. True equality can only be achieved through mass conformity. In other words, for society to be equal in the eyes of everyone, all individuals must be exactly the same, living the exact same lives. Nature proves this to be a fundamental impossibility. As long as biological and existential differences exist between the two sexes as well as individuals within the sexes, such attempts made to lead them toward such conformity will be rife with cognitive dissonance and strife.

If we are to achieve prosperity for the lives of women and men, both heterosexual and homosexual, cisgendered and transgendered, it is imperative that we break away from the dogmatic conclusions of feminism and work towards the benefit of individuals as we see and experience them, with eyes free of politicized lenses. Our concepts of gender must be freed of the gravity of feminism and become holistic. For gender is not solely for the feminist to own; it belongs to men as well as women, homemakers as well as working women, tough guys as well as sensitive guys etc. It belongs to the individual, as well as to the human race. Gender just is, and once we free ourselves of the blinders of gender politics we can finally work to help women and men as they are, not as we’re taught to see them through the ideology of gender politics.